Campaign for Grade-Level Reading Names
Pacesetter Communities in Six Impact Areas

Bright Spots Communities Also Recognized

WASHINGTON, D.C., SEPT. 30, 2020 – The HYPERLINK "http://www.gradelevelreading.n..."Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (CGLR) announced the Pacesetter communities across the United States that exemplify extraordinary vision and best practices for their work during 2019 in six community solutions impact areas: School Readiness, School Attendance/Chronic Absence, Summer and Afterschool, Healthy Development, Parent Success and Grade-Level Proficiency.

CGLR is a collaborative effort by funders, nonprofit partners, business leaders, government agencies, states and communities to ensure that more children in low-income families succeed in school and graduate prepared for college, a career and active citizenship. CGLR focuses on promoting early school success as an important building block of more hopeful futures for children in economically challenged families and communities.

“At this challenging time, we have much to learn from each other. These Pacesetter and Bright Spot communities are leading the way in the six impact areas that we know matter. We congratulate them for this achievement and encourage our entire network to learn from them,” says Ralph Smith, managing director of CGLR.

CGLR announced the 29 Pacesetter finalists in July, recognized on the basis of their having filed stories that were highly rated by peer reviewers from GLR Network communities. The stories describe successful strategies, approaches or programs that are being implemented by the finalists in their communities.

As the next step in the process, a Technical Review Team read the original stories and assessed supplementary data filed by the finalists to substantiate observable progress in one or more of the six impact areas.

The following communities are honored as Pacesetters for reporting significant observable progress in one or more of the impact areas:

Broward County, FL (Grade-Level Proficiency)

Indian River County, FL (School Readiness, Parent Success, Healthy Development, Grade-Level Proficiency)

Miami-Dade County, FL (Summer and Afterschool)

Palm Beach County, FL (Summer and Afterschool)

Suncoast, FL (Summer and Afterschool, Parent Success)

Whitfield County, GA (Grade-Level Proficiency)

Cedar Rapids, IA (Summer and Afterschool)

Des Moines, IA (Healthy Development)

Grinnell, IA (School Attendance/Chronic Absence)

Southeast Mississippi (School Attendance/Chronic Absence)

Nash and Edgecombe Counties, NC (Parent Success)

New York City (Mott Haven Neighborhood), NY (Grade-Level Proficiency)

Philadelphia, PA (Parent Success)

Salt Lake (Clearfield, Kearns, Park City and South Salt Lake), UT (Grade-Level Proficiency)

Roanoke, VA (Healthy Development)

Virginia Beach, VA (Summer and Afterschool)

The following communities are recognized as Bright Spots for filing stories that were highly rated for their promising ideas, approaches and strategies, based on criteria of effectiveness, replicability and sustainability:

Tempe, AZ (School Readiness, Grade-Level Proficiency)

Stockton-San Joaquin County, CA (School Attendance/Chronic Absence)

Hartford, CT (School Attendance/Chronic Absence)

Broward County, FL (School Readiness)

Delray Beach, FL (Grade-Level Proficiency)

Indian River County, FL (Summer and Afterschool)

Palm Beach County, FL (School Readiness)

Whitfield County, GA (Parent Success)

Des Moines, IA (School Readiness)

Sioux City, IA (Parent Success)

Story County, IA (School Readiness, Summer and Afterschool)

Quad Cities, IA & IL (School Readiness)

Shawnee County, KS (School Readiness, Parent Success)

New Orleans, LA (Summer and Afterschool)

Springfield, MA (School Readiness)

Durham County, NC (Parent Success)

New York City (Mott Haven Neighborhood), NY (Parent Success)

Lehigh Valley, PA (School Attendance/Chronic Absence)

Nashville, TN (Summer and Afterschool)

Pacesetters’ Journey

The process began in January when CGLR invited communities to file stories on its Community Learning for Impact & Improvement Platform (CLIP), using 16 categories that served as “tags” for each story when it was published on CLIP.

CGLR then asked the 112 communities that responded to self-nominate for Pacesetter Honors for one or more of their stories submitted for the What's Working Community Challenge.

CGLR received self-nominations of 214 stories from 50 communities representing 23 states and one Canadian province. The nominated stories were considered, sorted and ranked by panels of community-based peer reviewers. By the end of the process, there were 2,000 story reviews filed by close to 400 peer reviewers.

“The commitment to peer review is a unique and important aspect of the Pacesetter Recognition process,” says Smith. “The peer reviewers bring a combination of local knowledge and real-world experience that adds heft and credibility to the process.”

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About the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading

Launched in 2010, the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading is a collaborative effort of funders, nonprofit partners, business leaders, government agencies, states and communities across the nation to ensure that many more children from low-income families succeed in school and graduate prepared for college, a career and active citizenship. Since its launch, CGLR has grown to include more than 350 communities, representing 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and two provinces in Canada — with 5,000+ local organizations and 510 state and local funders (including 200+ United Ways). To learn more, visit

https://gradelevelreading.net/ and follow the movement on Twitter @readingby3rd.